Well-Read Life™

Why We Are Entering the Golden Age of Books Don’t Stop Reading to Your Kids – Part 2 of 2

I wish I had known about the reading “gap years” when our boys were in them.  These are the ages from about 7 to 13 when kids can read by themselves but would benefit far more as readers if we parents continued to read to them. (Read Part 1 of this posting for some additional background.)

I so enjoyed our boys’ pajama-clad reading time when they were little and wish it had lasted longer. On the other hand, I also remember being dead tired myself at their bedtimes, and many a night struggling to stay awake in order to read to them.

I feel guilty admitting this, but I remember being a bit relieved when my sons took the books themselves. Am I alone?

The reading gap years for children happen during the mountain-climbing years for most parents. When children are between 7 and 13 years old, parents are often working their hardest and longest to advance in their careers, all the while rushing to soccer games, recitals, social obligations, and their own business obligations.

While most parents might understand and like the idea of continuing to read to their children, the good intentions may fall into the wish bucket with lots of other wishes.

Where, then, can parents turn for help?

Long-distance reading

Terry Flynn, a marketing professional I met at an industry conference, told me he records stories for his two young daughters to play when he’s out of town. “I started doing this a couple of years ago when I started traveling a bit more than I liked,” he said.

His CD is a lovely thing. It has Terry’s creditable narration of Score One for the Sloths by Helen Lester, and Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin. These were spaced with beautiful music tracks, including "Baby" by Bobby McFerrin.

Now that his girls are 8 and 9 (solidly in the gap years), he finds reading is more give-and-take. “They now enjoy reading to me and showing off their own reading styles,” Terry says. But they still ask him to read to them. “I always record the books in private so that the first time they hear the story on the CD, it's a surprise,” he adds.

Hit play, hear book

When my own two sons were in their gap years, it happened to be when I got hooked listening to audiobooks in my car. Since I regularly drove the boys to school, they ended up hearing my books in haphazard fragments.

(Okay, just so you don’t think I’m a total selfish reptile of a parent, I would always listen and talk if they wanted, but sometimes they were just in some other place and I figured, “Well, it won’t hurt them to hear this for awhile.” I’d give them a little background and then hit the play button.)

The other day I asked our younger son, 18-year-old Corey, if he remembered any of this. He thought about it awhile. 

Yes, he did remember a few things.  He remembered Churchill’s “joke to that lady about being sober in the morning but her still being ugly” (Manchester’s biographies), and that sometimes it’s not medicine but laughter than can get you better when you’re sick (Norman Cousins’ Anatomy of an Illness). And he remembered Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, about the iconoclastic physicist.

Our older son, 20-year-old Cal, who’s studying in China, responded by email. “I think the books on tape were a big part of growing up and got me into reading. I am listening to Tim Weiner’s book on the CIA now, and it reminds me of all the ones I heard in the car on road trips and on the way to school each day.”

He remembers some of the books his brother mentioned and also Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Travels with Charlie, as well as  “Stanley shooting some native crossing a bridge” (The Autobiography of Sir Henry Morton Stanley).

So I guess by some sort of audio osmosis, our sons took in some adult books during their gap years. In retrospect, had I been more savvy about the comprehension gap, I might have had them choose some books and played them only when we were riding together—a kind of rolling story hour.

Today there are far more audiobooks available for every age to choose from. Teens are the fastest-growing segment of listeners, according to the Audio Publishers Association, with just over 50% of them reporting that they have heard an audiobook, compared with just over 25% of adults.

The human touch of togetherness

I don’t want to suggest that audiobooks or even your own voice recordings are better than physically sitting together and reading, but audio recordings are marvelous tools getting better all the time. Still, if you’re lucky enough to have family and friends close by, these can be the best substitute for frazzled parents during the gap years.

Rose K. Goldsen, one of my professors in grad school, lived in a communal home called Long House in Ithaca, New York. Rose had no family of her own and was near retirement, so having her own apartment connected with other families of all ages was perfect for her.

I remember how much pleasure she gained from reading to the little children of Long House. She explained that it didn’t much matter what she read—the children just loved the togetherness and the physical part of sitting with a book and hearing the sounds connected to the words Rose pointed to.

Being a sociologist, one day Rose tried an experiment. She picked up the phone book and began reading the first name her finger landed on. Then she paused. Almost immediately, the little girl in her lap piped up. 

“You forgot to read the number.”

I’ll always remember Rose’s triumphant face as she told this story. “Even the phone book!” she said, with the wonder of a researcher in a new world of discovery.

Despite all the bells and whistles of our Gizmo’d Age, kids can still crave a good read. All we have to do is want the same thing—together.

What have been your experiences with keeping ‘tweens between the cover of books? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Why We Are Entering the Golden Age of Books Don’t Stop Reading to Your Kids – Part 1 of 2

When I was on book tour with The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, an experience that may sound more impressive than it was, I thought my job was to give advice.

And advice I gave—on the myths and misconceptions about reading that can stand in the way of us leading our well-read lives. But I also received advice on this topic, and one piece of wisdom stood out for its simplicity and importance: Don’t stop reading to your kids once they begin reading for themselves.

The problem is, it feels so natural to stop.

Lap years to gap years

After the earliest years, when parents or other caregivers read to their young children, both the children and the adults delight in the baby steps of literacy—when sounding out letters magically creates whole words, and when children first string those words together.

Just as young children naturally delight in their increasing mobility, they take pride in first reading out loud and then reading silently to themselves. At this point, children may say they would prefer to read by themselves. Adults accept this with a certain justifiable if bittersweet pride.

Ironically, this is when the biggest opportunity may be lost. It’s a false finish line.

A long-time teacher of young children was the first to convey this concept to me. I’ve since asked more reading experts if they could verify this.

“Yes, parents should definitely continue to read to their kids,” says Patricia Hallion, an adjunct faculty member at the graduate program for reading teachers at Salem State College in Massachusetts. “Research has shown that until about eighth grade, kids are able to listen to books at a much higher level than they are able to read on their own.

“The gap is at least three reading levels, and sometimes more,” Patricia  says. “A lot of children have such depth of comprehension when listening, but their skill for sounding out words impedes them and stops the flow of comprehension when they are left on their own.”

When children begin to read by themselves, normally between the ages of 6 and 8, they enter their comprehension gap years that continue typically until they become teenagers. They should certainly read on their own, but for these five or six gap years, adults have an opportunity to bend the branch down and allow children to grasp literary fruit still out of their reach.

Three gifts

“I think that parents who stop reading aloud to their children when the children learn to read themselves are making a big mistake,” cautions librarian and famed book recommender Nancy Pearl (Book Lust, Book Crush). “To read aloud to your child is to give him or her three things: the gift of your uninterrupted time, the unspoken—but obvious—message that reading is important, and a shared experience of entering together into the world of a book.”

Nancy  and her husband both read plenty to their two daughters past the time the girls could read for themselves. “It’s a good way to begin a discussion of a difficult issue,” Nancy  adds, “but beyond that, it's a pure pleasure to watch a child respond to a book in his or her own particular way.”

From pictures to chapters

Lynda S. Hunter, the head of youth services at the Delray Beach Public Library, says a sense of place can help fill the gap. “I encourage parents to choose a comfortable area and designate it as the ‘Story Place.’ It can be the parents’ bed, or a large comfortable chair. Try to read together at the same time of day or evening. Encourage your child to share the reading but do not make it a condition.”

And parents can help children make the leap from picture books, which are usually read in one sitting, to chapter books, which are not. Start as early as age 4, Lynda advises.

“Begin to share short chapter books with some illustrations such as E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web or Stuart Little.  Read only one chapter each time,” Lynda says. “If your child wants to continue reading, place the chapter book aside and choose a picture book. This will acclimate the child to chapter books as well as create anticipation of what comes next. “

Staying with your kids in this phase helps many budding young readers of children’s books get comfortably rooted in reading grown-up books. “This  works,” Lynda says. 

The best picks are the kids’ picks

Emily D’Amour Pardo, marketing coordinator at the Books & Books bookstore in Miami, says it’s a good idea to let your children choose their own books.

“Parents often think their children are very advanced, and so will ask for books with content that might appeal to an adult reader, but might not hook a child,” Emily cautions. “They also don’t always appreciate that the things they read when they were children might not be as inviting to today’s ‘tween reader.  The best thing is to involve the child in the selection on his or her own book.”

‘My first book club’

Diane Barone, Foundation Professor of Literacy at the University of Nevada, Reno, recognizes that parents may feel uncomfortable reading to older children and suggests an alternative.

“They could each read the same book silently; then they might write something that was interesting, wonderful, weird, or so on about the book each time they read. Then the parent and child can find a time when they can chat about the book beginning with their written comments.” Through this process, says Diane, parents and children enjoy reading together in a process similar to a book club.

I know many of you have personal experiences with reading to children; what stories can you share? I’d love to hear.  Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Has a Movie Changed Your Life?

It’s not unusual to ask people if there was a book that changed their lives, but it’s not common to ask the same question about a movie. Why not?

Literature is about books. Books are what we make our children study in school; movies are what they watch on weekends to have fun. Okay, we do offer courses in film, but these are offered in college for the most part, after we’ve been grounded in the more fundamental art form of “real” literature.

And when movies are made from books, it’s assumed you should read the book first. Then it’s common to hear people say they are disappointed by the movie (“The book was so much better!”).

We surely admire our movies and the people who make them. Yet I think there’s also a certain prejudice against movies, a belief that they are lower art forms compared with books.

Whether movies are lower art forms might be answered in part by this question: Has a movie ever changed your life? If so, what was the movie and how did it change you?

To kick things off, I’ll go first.

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” changed my life.  I saw it when it came out in the ‘70s, while I was a young man. It shook me to the core. And it has affected my behavior ever since. Because of McMurphy’s tragic error of underestimating his adversary in Nurse Ratched, I choose my battles carefully. When I do fight, which isn’t often, I arm myself with enough knowledge and tools to make sure I win. (Well, for the most part.)

So… has a movie affected what you have done? Inspired you to live somewhere? Caused you to take up a career? Led you to the love of your life? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Has Reading Inspired You to Act?

First, my thanks to all of you who have responded to prior posts about reading and doing. I’m awed by the insights and experiences you share. You inspire me to keep searching for the many ways we can lead well-read lives. And that brings me to the following observations, followed by a question for you.

It was ten years ago, when I was just beginning to ask Levenger customers about their reading lives, that I asked an older woman whom I knew had read very widely whether there was one book that changed her life. She laughed good-naturedly, but said so many books had changed her life—mostly in small ways, sometimes in big ways—that picking just one didn’t make much sense to her.

As I’ve grown older and had the opportunity to expand my own reading, I find myself agreeing with that wise and experienced reader. As an example, the books we recently discussed here—Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, Three Cups of Tea, and Out of Poverty—have changed my life in a subtle but important way: I now have confidence that it is possible for all the world’s children to attend school and that illiteracy, like polio, can become mostly a problem of the past. Not that it’s easy, but if enough people set their minds to accomplish this, and go about it in the right ways, it really is possible.

I suppose this is the way most reading changes most people—subtly. We gain all-important perspective as we experience more of the world through the civilizing power of the word.

Sometimes, though, a book tips us into action. Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a man who would cure the world did that for me.

A dose of Farmer’s good medicine

Last summer a friend told me she adored this book. That recommendation, combined with the fact that I have long wanted to read something by this prize-winning author, got me to read it.

The book is about a brilliant, intensely driven professor of medicine at Harvard who is obsessed with solving some of the worst diseases humans face, and doing so on a global scale. That life alone would be worthy of high praise, but in addition, Paul Farmer is something of a saint. Eschewing the comfortable life of an elite in the developed world, Farmer chose instead to build a clinic in the worst part of what is perhaps the most desperate country in the western hemisphere: Haiti. He spends most of his life there, personally tending to the sickest patients.

For more than a year, Tracy Kidder trailed Farmer not only to Haiti, but also to Peru and Russia on medical missions and conferences and many spots in between to really understand what makes the man tick. It’s a great story.

But how did it get me to do something?

First, I felt intimated by Farmer. A few years younger than me, this guy not only mastered the medical science of his chosen fields, rising to the zenith of established medicine, but also had personally cured hundreds of people with his own skilled mind, big heart, and capable hands.

Moreover, Farmer inspired others to work with him to create a new organization called Partners in Health that has already improved the way tuberculosis, among other diseases, is treated around the world—saving lives by the thousands.

Like Paul Polak, Paul Farmer wasn’t content to gain merely an academic understanding of the field to which he would devote his life; he wanted an up-front-and-personal understanding, imperiling his own life by disease and even violence, to gain this perspective.

While I was reading the book, my own life seemed pale in comparison. True, at Levenger, I’m proud of the products we make that can help people read, write and practice their professions. I often tell our staff that we’re not saving the world, but our customers are.

But lacking in my life was anything resembling the hands-on experience that Farmer has with his patients. So, after years of supporting the Palm Beach Literacy Coalition with modest donations, I decided to become a tutor myself.

I had intended to do something like this in coming years—when the kids were all out of the house and when Levenger didn’t demand so much of my attention. But I jumped the gun because of Mountains Beyond Mountains.

Reveling in what’s next

I’ve tutored only a few times so far, but already I can tell the need I have harbored to do this was deeper than I imagined. My 26-year-old Mexican student is a joy to help because he is so hard-working and intent on success. He works as a gardener, sending some of his earnings to his parents back home. After working all day in our Floridian sub-tropical conditions, he showers and cleans up before walking to a school a few miles from our offices here in Delray, where he practices his English Monday through Thursday, for two hours.

His roommates make fun of him for studying, but he badly wants to pass the GED and get ahead. The well-worn Spanish/English dictionary he carries in a pocket pays mute testimony to his diligence. He wants me to help him with his pronunciation, and has particular trouble pronouncing  the “x” as in next.

Last week, when Tropical Storm Fay closed all our schools, I felt empty for not being able to spend our Tuesday evening session together. I wanted to hear his progress and to pass on a suggestion I picked up from a speech pathologist about how to conquer that pesky “x” sound.

I’ll never be a Paul Farmer, but because of Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, I think I’ll be a better Steve Leveen.

Has a book caused you to do something new? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).